boy

In America, any boy may become president. I suppose that's just one of the risks that he takes.

—Stevenson, Adlai E(wing)

As a boy I genuinely believed in the man who never ate bacon because its red and white stripesreminded himof Sheffield Unitedöindeed in my blue and white Wednesday heart I applauded and supported his loyalty.

—Hattersley, Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron

Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not tricked and frounced as she was wont With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchiefed in a comely cloud.

—Milton,John

   In youth, before I waxe'  d old, The blind boy,Venus' baby, For want of cunning made me bold, In bitter hive to grope for honey.

—Spenser, Edmund

Timothy Winters comes to school With eyes as wide as a football pool, Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters: A blitz of a boy isTimothy Winters.

—Causley, Charles

Numquam enim audiendi quod aliquis monachus super puerum incubuisset, quin statim post ipsum surrexisset puer. I have heard before of a monk throwing himself on a boy, but the boyalways rose again afterwards.

—Map,Walter

Boy Meets Girl in Winnipeg and Who Cares?

—MacLennan, Hugh

I know not what I mayappear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

—Newton, Sir Isaac

To do nothing and get something, formed a boy's ideal of a manly career.

—Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled; The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead.

—Hemans, Felicia ne¤  e Browne

A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

—Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

So that in the end there were the trees. The boy walking through them with his head drooping as he increased in stature. Putting out shoots of green thought. So that, in the end, there was no end.

—White, Patrick Victor Martindale

The sunlight falls across the country, lighting up the greenstone years of a boy with his father.

—Ihimaera,Witi Tame

But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first.You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.

—Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro

I look like a tree toad who was changed into a boy but not completely.

—Keillor, (Gary Edward) Garrison

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride. Of him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough along the mountainside: By our own spirits are we deified. We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof comes in the end despondencyand madness.

—Wordsworth,William

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin'day, or Warren's blackin', or Rowland's oil, or some o'them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boyand every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!

—Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)

Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch.

—Miller, Henry Valentine

Give, you gods, Give to your boy, your Caesar, The rattle of a globe to play withal, Thisgewgaw world, and put him cheaply off: I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.

—Dryden,John

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his wayattended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

—Wordsworth,William

Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But hating, my boy, is an art.

—Nash, (Frederic) Ogden

He kissed the hand and by the hand led And to his mother brought, Who in sorrow pale, through the lonely dale, Her little boy weeping sought.

—Blake,William

The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.

—Salinger,J(erome) D(avid)

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.

—Keats,John

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed, Droops on the little hands, little gold head; Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

—Milne, A(lan) A(lexander)

Mad about the boy, It's pretty funny but I'm mad about the boy. He has a gayappeal That makes me feel There may be something sad about the boy.

—Coward, Sir Noe«  l Peirce

There is manya boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.

—Sherman,WilliamTecumseh

[At school] I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

—Beerbohm, Sir (Henry) Max(imilian)

'My boy,' he says,'always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you.'

—Runyon, (Alfred) Damon

Inever was a boy, never played atcricket; it isbetter to let Nature take her course.

—Mill,John Stuart

   I am confident that no boy, who will not be allured to letters without blows, will ever be brought to anything with them.

—Steele, Sir Richard

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well thoughöand loathed him.

—Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens

When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an attorney's firm. I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefullee That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

—Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)

The parent who could see his boyas he really is, would shake his head and say: 'Willie is no good; I'll sell him.'

—Leacock, Stephen Butler

Augustus was a chubby lad; Fat, ruddy cheeks Augustus had: And everybody saw with joy The plump and hearty, healthy boy. He ate and drank as he was told, And never let his soup get cold. But one day, one cold winter's day, He screamed out,'Take the soup away! O take the nasty soup away! I won't have any soup today.'

—Hoffmann, Heinrich

Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to bya boy, waiting for rain.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

A Jewish manwith parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die!

—Roth, Philip Milton

Robin was a rovin' Boy, Rantin'rovin', rantin', rovin', Robin was a rovin' Boy, Rantin'rovin' Robin.

—Burns, Robert

A salesman isgot to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

—Miller, Arthur

Selwyn MacGregor, thenicest boy who evercommitted the sin of whisky.

—Spark, Dame Muriel Sarah ne¤  e  Camberg

A sensitive boy's humiliations may be very good fun for ordinary thick-skinned grown-ups; but to the boy himself theyareso acute, so ignominious, that he cannot confess themöcannot but deny them passionately.

—Shaw, George Bernard

Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes: He only does it to annoy, Because he knows it teases.

—Dodgson

'Father! father! where are you going? O do not walk so fast. Speak, father, speak to your little boy, Or else I shall be lost.'

—Blake,William

I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heav'n Than when I was a boy.

—Honorius of Autun

The boy's mouth is a trifle more Irishy than is necessary.

—Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens

From his childhood onward this boy will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers by the score, and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation. A line will be drawn between him and the people whom he is to be called upon some day to reign over. In due course, following the precedent which has already been set, he will be sent on a tour round the world, and probably rumours of a morganatic alliancewill follow, and the end of it all will bethattheCountry will be calledupontopay the bill.

—Hardie, (James) Keir

Unless [artists] can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

—Thurber,James Grover

'What a wonderful boy he is!'said my mother. 'I'm feared he turn out to be a conceited gowk,'said old Barnet, the minister's man.

—Hogg,James

When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun roseand set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle.Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?† What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my country?

—Sitting Bull real name Tatanka Iyotake

   Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sundayafternoons in damp front farmhouse parlours, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.

—Thomas, Dylan Marlais

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talks with the departed dead.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Gamp would certainly have drunk its little shoes right off its feet, as with our precious boy he did, and arterwards send the child a errand to sell his wooden leg for any money it 'ud fetch as matches in the rough, and bring it home in liquor.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

You are a human boy, my young friend. A human boy.O glorious to be a human boy!† O running stream of sparkling joy To be a soaring human boy!

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam